How Will Our New MPs Deal with This City's Old Problems?

Figures published late last week show that children born in Stoke-on-Trent are twice as likely to die in the first year of life as in almost any other part of the country.

The city has an infant mortality rate of 8.1 deaths in every 1000 live births, the national average is 3.9 In 2016, the last year for which figures are available there were 26 infant deaths out of 3293 live births.

Speaking to the Sentinel Dr Paul Edmonds-Jones director of adult social care, health integration and wellbeing for the city council said: 'a lot of work is taking place in the city to address this issue.'

Poor public health, poverty and poor housing have been cited as contributing factors to the high rate of infant mortality.

That a city like Stoke-on-Trent has a worryingly high infant mortality rate is shocking, but, sadly, not surprising. This city has been in the grip of serious societal problems for decades.

Mix that with the fall-out from ten years of austerity and it is hardly surprising that the most vulnerable people, children, are suffering.

It prompts an important question about the new political settlement, how will the city's three new Tory MPs deal with this city's old problems?

These include poor physical and mental health, low educational attainment, poor housing, and pockets of deep and intractable poverty. Added to this is an unspoken, but powerful, feeling that second best is more than we have a right to ask for.

The problems this city faces have taken decades to build up and will take as long again to resolve. They will also need considerable government investment delivered over a sustained period

That presents Jack Brereton, Jonathan Gullis and Jo Gideon with some major problems, solving which or failing to do so could decide their long-term future

The Conservative Party had a deep-seated antipathy towards 'big government' seeing it as the embodiment of interfering bureaucracy. Yet only the government had the reach of resources to solve the problems of cities like Stoke-on-Trent.

The standard Tory practice of delivering pious homilies about people 'pulling themselves up by their boot-straps' doesn't cut much mustard if you can't afford boots in the first place.

Government, big or small riding to the rescue of forgotten towns doesn't fit too well with the MO of their mercurial party leader PM Boris Johnson. The Johnson doctrine, such as it is, is to go in quick, grab all the low hanging fruit and milk the situation for every drop of publicity, then get out even quicker before any adverse consequences of your actions become apparent.

That play won't work with problems that have taken years to build to a head and will need as long again to resolve. Johnson may have promised to be in the corner of the UK's forgotten towns when the flashbulbs were popping on election night; he won't be there for the long haul.

Not unless his marching corps of new MPs representing constituencies nobody expected to turn blue go into bat for them anyway. If the rest are like our three amigos that's what they promised to do on election night.

Now it is time for words to be turned into action; the sort of action that could stop a promising career in its tracks. Two of their number will have to face that possibility if they are to be even halfway creditable representatives

Having shifted once the tectonic plates of politics can do so again and probably much more easily this time. The new Tories sitting for surprising seats will have to risk standing up to be counted; or face the possibility of getting counted out.